Supported by former President Rafael Correa, candidate Andrés Arauz is expected to lead the vote in the first round of the Ecuadorian presidential election, according to polls at the end of the polls and the first poll data.
At 11 p.m. this Sunday (7), with 7.97% of the polls deleted, he was the most voted, with 33%. His rivals Guillermo Mendoza and Yaku Perez totaled around 19%, in a tight competition for second place.
The result will be a victory for Rafael Correa, who ruled Ecuador from 2007 to 2017.
The advertisement for Arauz’s candidacy with Correa as vice-president was even ready, on posters bearing both surnames and the hashtag # BinomiodaEsperança. The plan was to put into practice the same strategy Cristina Kirchner used in 2019. To get around the high rejection of her name, Argentina placed moderate Alberto Fernández at the top of the poll. With this, Peronism won.
For Correa, things got more complicated because, due to the fact that he was convicted of corruption, he had to travel to the country to personally register as a candidate. Only, if he did that, he could be arrested when he arrived. He applied to register abroad, which had already been allowed in other cases, but in Correa’s case, he was rejected. The former president claimed to have been the victim of political persecution. It didn’t help.
This is how Correa’s face continued to appear on election propaganda posters for Arauz, virtually unknown to the public, indicating that he would only be her political godfather. As vice-president, another politician from Correa’s group, Carlos Rabascall, was chosen.
The duo then changed their rhetoric. Correa would no longer hold a post in a possible presidency of Arauz, nor would he return to the country. He would be an informal political and economic advisor and would continue to live in Belgium. Arauz said he would do anything to defuse the sentence that sentenced his godfather to eight years in prison. Otherwise, he admits he could give her a reprieve.
Arauz turned 36 on Saturday (6). Besides being young, he is also little known in the country for having lived abroad for a long time. He studied economics at the University of Michigan, United States. Then he returned to Ecuador for his master’s degree at Flacso (Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences). Recently he was doing his doctorate at UNam (National Autonomous University of Mexico).
Born in Quito, he is the son of an oil company executive and a tourist agent. It was however created by his maternal grandmother, Flor Galarza, 106, who led him to vote this Sunday (7). “I owe him the education I had in my childhood and all the affection I received.”
In 2009, Arauz worked at the Central Bank of Ecuador. In 2015, he was appointed by Correa as Minister of Knowledge and Human Talents. He was also Minister of Culture.
In 2017, with the victory of Lenín Moreno, he founded the Observatory of Dollarization, a think tank on economic issues related to the future of the country, while he was in Mexico, living there with his wife. , Mariana Véliz, and the couple’s son. . Arauz speaks English, French and Russian, as well as Spanish.
An investigation is underway into the public contracts his mother’s travel agency allegedly received while he was part of the Correa government. Another investigation opened against Arauz is the one which questions the irregular hiring of an advertising company while he was Minister of Culture.
Among his campaign promises are the return of the policies of income redistribution and high public spending, which marked the Correa government, a possible default of the IMF and, in the fight against the effects of the pandemic and the distribution of a thousand dollars to over a million. Ecuadorians who are unemployed due to the current situation.